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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28340196">Castle Down</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolibat/pseuds/Lolibat'>Lolibat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Actually more gen, Bad fashion sense Ichigo, From a fashion sense three centuries old, Kisuke the fashion critic, M/M, Samurai god Kisuke, platonic, prompt: winter god, uraichi prompt challenge 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:28:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,883</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28340196</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolibat/pseuds/Lolibat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>UraIchi PC5 event, prompt: winter god/spirit</p><p>It's supposed to be a simple trip to a castle down and a ryokan. It's supposed to be a relaxing hike and castle tour. But nothing goes as it is supposed to- not for him, Ichigo thinks. He's caught halfway up a mountain in a blizzard in the middle of October. He tugs his scarf closer. He needs to find shelter and fast.<br/>He sits down on the first steps of the shrine, his head already dipping with sleepiness. He drifts off, hoping- praying- that whichever god is there will forgive him for his intrusion.<br/>--<br/>There is a human before him, snoring and wearing something truly atrocious and unsuitable for a visit to a winter god’s temple in the middle of a blizzard. </p><p>What is he even wearing? Kisuke thinks, confused at the strip of wool that winds its way across the teenager's neck but doesn't cover the torso.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>105</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>UraIchi Prompt Challenge #5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Castle Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was meant to be a school trip over the winter to Izushi, Ichigo thinks with a sigh and pulls his scarf closer to him to the point of near strangulation. They’re studying the warring periods of Japan, and there just happened to be a cheap three day-two night package at a ryokan near Izushi, so they booked a tour bus over. It’s <em>supposed</em> to be a simple castle tour and a hike, but Ichigo is Ichigo, and <em>supposed to be</em> might as well be a joke to him.</p><p>Instead, he’s caught in a freak blizzard in <em>October</em>, in the middle of the mountains, with a thousand Torii gates above him and thousand more below him. Snow is falling in almost a constant blanket now, and he doesn’t trust his own ability to walk down the mountains past the screen of white without tripping to an early death.</p><p>He needs to find a place to rest and wait out the storm, soon.</p><p>He ducks between the scarlet gates and into a small clearing on the side of the mountain; he’s exhausted from the hike up, and his breaths are coming out in small puffs. He can’t feel his nose.</p><p>The clearing is eerily still, but it is not empty. Ichigo peers curiously at the small round statue at the edge near the woods; in front of it is bunch of stones, arranged curiously in a perfect circle. There’s something that tugs at Ichigo’s senses, that pulls him over and urges him- almost <em>compels </em>him- to touch it, but he snatches his hand back at the last second and shakes his head.</p><p>No, he has to find shelter first. Explore later.</p><p>He walks deeper into the clearing and sees a small, overgrown path leading into the woods. The snow starts thinning out there, caught in between the thick layers of foliage. The night is falling, and he’s off the beaten path; the feeble sunlight dims.</p><p>He spies a temple, off the curve of the broken walkway; it will have to do. He washes his hands and his mouth by the small fountain at the entrance; the brass dragon spout has long since stopped flowing with water, and there’s algae growing on the bottom, but he’s raised to be polite to gods… especially when he’s desperate for their help.</p><p>The temple before him is clearly abandoned, with a gaping hole through the top of the thatched roof. The wood that holds the paper screens is rotten and discolored in places. It looks to be… a war temple of some sort; there are swords at the four points of the temple and carvings of crows. A slab of rock has writing on it, but the characters and gold lacquer have long worn away with time. It looks to be almost two centuries old.</p><p>He bows at the entrance of the temple and leaves a coin to the inugami statues guarding the entrance, and steps up to shake the tattered rope and pray.</p><p>“Please grant me shelter at least for tonight, so I can weather this storm,” Ichigo prays. Miraculously, he still has a pocket full of change and enough five yen coins to give as an offering.</p><p>Then, he sits down on the first steps of the shrine, his head already dipping with sleepiness. He drifts off, hoping that whichever god is there will forgive him for his intrusion.</p>
<hr/><p>There is a human snoring before him wearing something truly atrocious and unsuited for a visit to a winter god’s temple in the middle of a blizzard.</p><p>It’s been two and half centuries since Tessai died, and the miko around him have long since left to find other prospects and to marry. He’s a winter war god, left to his own devices to guard the battleground he once soaked thrice-over with blood.  </p><p>Or more specifically, to guard what he once sealed there at the cost of his brethren’s lives. Steel grey eyes look at the small tone figure, distantly past the cover of trees. <em>Aizen</em>. He still sleeps, though the teenager seems to have stirred him up a bit.</p><p>Kisuke sighed. It’s been two hundred and fifty-three years, but don’t humans teach their children anything nowadays?</p><p>If the child had stepped into that circle of stones, he would have taken Aizen’s place. Forever.</p><p>While he’s still fully capable of sealing away that malevolent spirit, it would be difficult: no one worships him anymore. No one even remembers him anymore. He would have no energy to draw from except his own meager stores.</p><p>He was human once, many centuries ago; on his death, he was enshrined as a god, but even gods like him need <em>belief</em> to carry on. He only managed to wake up this time from the tinkling of the five yen coin dropping into his offerings box. Who knows how long he will sleep the next time, until some lost stranger stumbles upon his abode?</p><p>He flips the coin in his hands; the familiar bronze circle and the punched out square is a comfort to him. The temple is in tatters; the straw screens growing mold.</p><p>He sighs, and sits down next to the teen. He’s <em>shivering</em> in a flimsy shirt and there’s an eye searing woolen strip around his neck (why does it not extend down and cover him more?) Kisuke brushes the hair out of the teen’s eyes, allowing him to curl up closer.</p><p>He’s not going to get any warmth from an incorporeal body, Kisuke thinks with gallows humor. He’s a winter god for a reason.</p><p>Silly boy, he thinks with a sigh and watches the snowdrift fall.</p>
<hr/><p>How is it, that he wakes up even <em>colder</em> than when he sat down on the temple steps? Ichigo startles himself awake with a sneeze.</p><p>“You’re awake,” a voice says calmly somewhere above him.</p><p>His teeth are clattering too badly for him to reply, but he blanches when he sees a semi-transparent form hovering over him.</p><p>Holy shit, I am <em>so</em> sorry, he wants to say. He only manages “Holy” through shaking lips, and the god laughs and waves open a tessen. The points on the fan glint dangerously in the morning sun.</p><p>“Yes, yes, I’m the god here. You were very lucky not to die, Child,” he says, almost gentle scold.</p><p>“Thank you,” Ichigo bows low, nearly toppling over in his effort to not get eviscerated on the spot.</p><p>“What is your name, Child?” Kisuke asks, his eyes sly, his face half obscured by his fan.</p><p>“Kurosaki Ichigo,” he replies truthfully, seeing no reason to lie before a god.</p><p>The god sighs, snapping his fan shut. “What are people teaching their kids these days?”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Ichigo asks, curious. Was he <em>supposed</em> to lie? And what is he supposed to call the ghost in front of him?</p><p>The deity sits down with a plop. “Giving strangers your true name is dangerous, Ichigo. I could stop you from leaving. I could keep you alive for that night and freeze you with the morning sun. I could do a lot of things with your name- your <em>true name</em>. You would do well to guard it better, Child.”</p><p>“But you’re a <em>god</em>; I can’t just <em>lie</em> to you,” he insists.</p><p>“Well, how do you know <em>I’m</em> not lying to you?” there’s a sly smile that plays at his lips.</p><p>That gives Ichigo a pause. He considers the spirit, who is… trying to <em>help</em> him?</p><p>“Well, what may I call you then, if not a god?” Ichigo asks formally, remember to use a more archaic form of “I”.</p><p>“You may call me Urahara Kisuke,” the god replies.</p><p>“The samurai?” Ichigo blinks in surprise. The god nods, tickled that someone still remembers the human him.</p><p>And then Ichigo decides, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I’m half Quincy,” he admits, casually naming one of the last pure bloodlines left in Japan. “I’m not trained, but I can manifest a spirit bow if I need to. I know by my blood that you weren’t lying to me.”</p><p>Kisuke raises an eyebrow at that. Half Quincy? How interesting. He supposes it’s even <em>worse</em>, that he’s half Quincy and still so oblivious to the ways of the world. So, he does the only thing he does nowadays: he sighs.</p><p>“If you say so, <em>Kurosaki</em>. Come on then; there are probably some clothes you can borrow in the back. You’re going to freeze to death even <em>without </em>my help if you go down the mountain dressed like that.”</p>
<hr/><p>“Where are all your priests and miko?” Ichigo asks, making a face as he shakes the dust off of moth-bitten bits of kimono. He surveys the inside, sees the ancient beams holding up the structure and wonders- the temple has got to be much, much older than two hundred and fifty years.</p><p>“Dead,” Kisuke waves a hand. He mourns, but there is only so much mourning he can do as time passes him by.</p><p>“Is there <em>anyone</em> who comes?” Ichigo asks absentmindedly, then immediately backtracks when he realizes how incredibly rude that sounded.</p><p>Kisuke barks a laugh. He’s glad the teen has some spine at least, even if he has no sense. “No. Not anymore.”</p><p>Ichigo puts the yukata down and looks at him.</p><p>There is sadness in those wide amber eyes- not pity (never <em>pity</em>), but sympathy.</p><p>“That’s… not right,” the child mutters, his brows drawn together and a stubborn frown pulling at his mouth.</p><p>Kisuke shrugs and smiles bitterly. “I hope you know that there are a great many things ‘not right’ with your world right now.” Starting with your shirt, he thinks.</p><p>But really, rather than picking out what’s <em>not right</em>, is there anything that <em>is</em> right anymore? The ways of the gods have been forgotten, traditions lost and history flung aside for modernization. The blessings of the land and of their worship have been lost. There is no future for anyone in a dying land with no <em>belief</em>; human, animal, or spirit.</p><p>And they’ll die ignorant, as humans always do.</p><p>“No, I <em>didn’t</em> know.” His bright gaze turns downward. “But I know <em>now</em>. Tell me how to fix it.”</p><p>He snaps open the fan if only to hide his surprise. What a bold child, demanding things from strange gods. He has a good heart, he rues. Silly child, he thinks. There is no fixing this. Not anymore.</p><p>“There is no fixing it- not by yourself anyways,” Kisuke says finally. But thank you, for trying. He wants to say. Instead, he slides over a cold cup of barley tea in a cracked teacup.</p><p>Ichigo murmurs his thanks, but there’s something in the way he stares at Kisuke’s semi-transparent form that makes him uneasy.</p>
<hr/><p>He lets Ichigo go when the sun reaches high noon, as he must.</p><p>Well, not a must. He has his true name (a leash, that the child hands out like <em>candy</em>). He doesn’t <em>have</em> to let him go. But Kisuke is a samurai first and foremost; he holds his honor close to his heart. The child has prayed earnestly, paid earnestly for help. He won’t begrudge him that. No tricks; not this time.</p><p>But as much as he loathes to admit it, he’ll miss the teenager with terrible fashion sense and daylily bright hair. He’ll miss the vibrancy of life and the comfort of having another person sitting with him for a cup of tea.</p><p>He doesn’t want to be left alone in the cold- not again (<em>he died in the cold, frozen first from finger and toes then everywhere else</em>). But he is a winter god in a forgotten temple, and he has no choice.</p><p>So, he sends Ichigo away, draped in formal kimonos three centuries out of fashion and faded with age.</p><p>He does what he must, but something in his chest twists.</p>
<hr/><p>Kisuke does not count the passage of time- not anymore- but he’s woken up again all too soon by a clatter of coins.</p><p>He frowns, materializing out of his shrine deep in the heart of the temple.</p><p>There is more clattering of coins- one, two, five, then more than he can count. The bell rings endlessly, busier than it has been since the turn of the millennium. The rope stays, frayed but holding strong.</p><p>He hears whispers of prayers; faintly than louder with each muttering. It gives him a headache and makes him blink the sleep out of his eyes.</p><p>“What…?” he mutters in confusion. He hears a prayer asking seriously for a woman’s hand in marriage and snorts. Wrong temple.</p><p>“Oi Kisuke,” Ichigo waves with a grin. It’s mid-summer now, and the forest is alive around him. There’s a troop of teenagers at his Torii, all bright checkered skirts and uniform ties.</p><p>Even Aizen is irked, as much as he can tell from the assembly of rocks. There appears to be… a multitude of bright yellow cones surrounding him. There’s even a sign somewhere nearby.</p><p>“Ichigo,” Kisuke dips his head in greeting, polite if a bit baffled, his hands hidden in his sleeves. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>It’s his fate to guard this mountain for eternity; his penance to be forgotten and left abandoned. What is a mere teenager going to do to change that?</p><p>Herd a troop of randy children right up to his front doors, apparently.</p><p>The other teenagers don’t see him, but Ichigo does (perhaps it hints at his heritage of something else- no <em>humans</em> should be able to see him, no matter the purity of their bloodline).</p><p>“I came to visit you,” he says stubbornly, and shoves a mountain of Kagami mochi right up into Kisuke’s arms. He has three bottles of sake with him and a bundle of crumpled rice in his bag.</p><p>“Here, I’ll set up the main shrine inside and clean out the screens,” he says, getting busy and making himself right at home. “Mom showed me how,” he says. “I can finally come help clean up now that it’s not stupidly cold anymore.”</p><p>Feeling a bit like he just got overrun by a bull, Kisuke sits down hard and points him towards the general direction of the shrine. Ichigo grins, summer bright and full of life, and rolls up his sleeves.</p><p>“There’s going to be a festival on November third, to honor the history of the castle,” Ichigo says absentmindedly. “I asked the organizer of the festival if it would be okay to take a detour and lead the people over here too. He said okay. Is that alright with you?”</p><p>Yes, Kisuke wants to say. He did know of the terribly noisy and rowdy festival that happens occasionally, but he’s never ventured down (and they’ve always passed him by, unseen). He’s used to it.</p><p>“My classmates wanted to know where I got such expensive kimono,” Ichigo says in lieu of an excuse for <em>why</em> Kisuke’s suddenly getting more prayers than he can comprehend. What exactly is calculus, and why does that prayer sound extremely desperate?</p><p>“The president of the textiles club at school almost punched me in the face when she saw the state of that kimono I took,” Ichigo snorts. “It’s not <em>my</em> fault, but she wanted to rescue the rest of it since there’s still plenty left.”</p><p>Kisuke is baffled. He never anticipated that this would happen. He feels himself becoming more solid by the second, less transparent and more alive, filled with the <em>belief</em> that has suddenly reappeared.</p><p>“Ichigo,” he says seriously. There’s a million things he wants to say, but he starts with swallowing his pride and bows. “Thank you.” For sparing me an eternity of ennui and isolation, a fate of hibernation and death.</p><p>Ichigo rubs the back of his neck and ducks from under the hanging of the shrine. “I should be thanking you, actually; you were right about the name thing you know. My mom yelled at me when I got back, and now I have to go to Ise Shrine with my uncle every month because she says I’ll accidentally end up killing myself before I turn twenty if I don’t learn this stuff properly. I think the head priest is maybe starting to like me?”</p><p>Kisuke hides a snort from behind his tessen.</p><p>“Yeah, maybe not,” Ichigo agrees.</p><p>He stops his cleaning and really looks at Kisuke, now that he’s not dying from hypothermia and Kisuke isn’t just a barely-there shadow.</p><p>“No god should die forgotten,” Ichigo says quietly. “I’ll make sure you won’t be- not anymore.”</p><p>Then, he mood does a one-eighty, and he grins. “Besides, you don’t have to thank me. This is my way of saying thank <em>you</em>. My life is worth more than a five –yen coin, you know.”</p><p>Kisuke wants to point out that it’s technically fifteen yen, because he left two more coins by the inugami statues outside, but he refrains.</p><p>“Only if you think so,” Kisuke teases. He’s wrong. Ichigo’s life is not worth fifteen yen; it’s priceless.</p><p>“I suppose if you’re cleaning my temple for me, I could teach you a bit more about the history…” he offers.</p><p>Ichigo’s all ears and smiles, and Kisuke thinks that maybe the teen is tolerable company, even if he’s still wearing what looks like underwear with a bunch of metal bits attached to it.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is Uraichi server's fault. All of it. </p><p>Incidentally, this is based off a real event when I went to visit Izushi some years ago in July. This is a real temple, and there is a very real circle of rocks there. I mean absolutely no disrespect for Izushi and the temple there. This temple is called the Morosugi Shrine, if anyone is interested to learn more. It is a wonderful place- very peaceful. The soba noodles there are delicious and I regret not stuffing my luggage full of soba noodles. Highly recommended. I'll have to go back there one of these days. </p><p>Title comes from Emilie Autumn's song, Castle Down- it's the first thing I thought of when I went for a title. </p><p>Time: ~ 2 hours including editing</p></blockquote></div></div>
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